In a typical post on a good youth ministry blog, Timothy Eldred drills down to the core of everything youth ministry is about:
There is only one objective for youth ministry – for the whole church in fact. That goal also defines the purpose of ministry clearly and concisely. It is synthesized with one dynamic word: discipleship. It is the last word Jesus spoke when he commissioned his faithful few. It was his number one priority and our number one failure.
Because I don’t agree with Timothy, I have a problem. Or he does.
A comprehensive analysis of “discipleship” as a lens for doing ministry–any ministry–is beyond the scope of any blog post. And it wouldn’t help. Because this problem is not for lack of analysis. Timothy’s analysis is sound, and his elevation of discipleship as the sole objective for the church is compelling. Youth ministries from Kalamazoo to Kenya are surely thriving with just such an understanding.
But I’m not in that boat, and neither is the church I serve. And this is the elephant in the mainline youth ministry room. Especially among those congregations on the left side of the theological spectrum, “discipleship” does not seem to appear as a useful way of describing the life of faith. There doesn’t seem to be a singular preferred alternative, in my experience, but the longer I steward the youth ministry of just such a congregation the more I feel the failure of “discipleship” to contribute anything to my work.
The grown ups in my students’ congregation don’t employ discipleship-speak. The preachers don’t use it. It doesn’t appear in the prayers and hymns on Sunday morning, either. It’s not in the vocabulary of the faith in which they are being reared. That’s not a critique. Discipleship’s absence is surely no accident. But it doesn’t change the shape of the problem.
Succinctly put, the problem is this: Timothy and I both care deeply about youth ministry, yet we would seem to be drilling for very different minerals, so to speak. I’ll propose some alternatives to discipleship in my context in a later post, but for now, does this seem like an accurate statement of a problem? Or am I imagining things?
YoRocko! 
I think it depends on how you understand or define “discipleship.” For most of my tenure in the youth ministry at Fourth, we have actually used discipleship as one of the descriptions of what we do. We talk about discipleship, fellowship, worship, and service. I chose discipleship to be a more inclusive word than “education”. For me, discipleship in youth ministry–or any ministry–is about shaping our lives according to the gospel. It is about being a follower of Jesus. So when we learn about Jesus, the Bible, and theology and what that means for us trying to live as Christians in the 21st century, I call that discipleship.
So, I suppose I’d want to know what you and Timothy mean by discipleship. Or, what do you think Timothy means that you find troubling?
In addition to definitions, for me a big part of this issue is balance. I don’t think we would want to use one single descriptor for what we do in youth ministry. That is why have these four elements that we strive to balance in our approach with youth.